UNIT 3 CRITIQUES OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Structure
3.1

Introduction

3.2

The Romantics

3.3

Nietzsche

3.4

Karl Marx

3.5

Marcuse and the Frankfurt School

3.6

Critics of Science

3.7

Postmodernism

3.8

Summary

3.1

INTRODUCTION

The Enlightenment embodied the spirit of optimism. Its advocates believed that they
lived in a world marked by greater wellbeing and happiness of all. There was visible
progress in every walk of life and indeed the possibility that men could now shape
their future. Reason and scientific rationality had emancipated men from the empire
of fate so that they could advance firmly and surely towards the apprehension of
truth and the creation of a world free from scarcity, hunger and disease. This vision
of liberation and progress was accompanied by the understanding that men now
had the determination and the courage to use their intelligence to challenge religious
dogmas and discover for themselves the laws by which the natural and the social
world are governed. The enlightened mind could therefore think of controlling nature,
harnessing its energies for the advantage of humankind and shaping a better social
world.

3.2

THE ROMANTICS

The Enlightenment understanding of man, society, history and knowledge did not
however go unchallenged. By the end of the 18th century itself the Enlightenment
faced a challenge from a group of intellectuals who were identified as Romantics.
They questioned almost every aspect of the enlightenment thinking from its
conception of truth, science and reason to its belief in the idea of progress. The
Enlightenment had represented the present as an advance upon the past, the
Romantics, by contrast, saw in it the deterioration of the human condition. Jean
Jacques Rousseau argued that the development of arts and sciences had resulted in
the social and moral degeneration of man. Division of labour, differentiation of functions
and applications of technology had, in his view, corrupted men and destroyed their
idyllic existence. Indeed it had created a hiatus between nature and man. While man
in his natural state was guided by the principle of pity that is, a natural aversion to
seeing any other sentient being perish or suffer, especially if it is one of our kind the
progress of civilization had made him egoistic and self-centred. Above all, it had
resulted in the loss of freedom for the self. Men led an alienated existence now,
subordinated to the order of time and work that is imposed by industrializing capital.
Romanticists like Rousseau sought salvation in the natural order. For them, it was
only in the natural order that mans truest and deepest needs could be satisfied.
Further, in contrast to that ideal world the present appeared as a disappointment, if

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not a complete failure. It was an object of bitterness and resentment. Consequently,

several romanticists idealized the past. Some even wanted to turn the clock back.
These writings, attempting to glorify the past echoed the sentiments of the disinherited
aristocratic class and they were congenial to their demand for returning to feudalism.
However, this was not the defining attribute of Romanticism. The Romantics rejected
the present society, harked back to the pre-modern world and created the image of
a natural man primarily to challenge the mechanistic and instrumental rationality of
the new capitalist order. Through its representations of the past and other civilizations
it sought to reveal the limitations of the modern world-view and the scientific rationality
that underpinned it.
The Romantic rebellion was, in many ways, the other, that is, the negation, of
Enlightenment. It affirmed values that opposed everything that Enlightenment stood
for. The Enlightenment had elevated reason to the position of sovereign authority. It
believed that reason had the ability to discover the absolute truth, both about the
meaning of history as well as the working of the universe. The Philosophes assumed,
on the one hand, that reason rules over the universe and, on the other, that it was
supremely important to man. Reason could enable us to understand the functioning
of this intricately designed machine, called nature, discover its laws and apply that
knowledge to control the physical and the social world. This idea that reason either
controls everything or could be made to do so was fundamentally challenged by
Romanticism. The challenge took many different forms. At the most immediate level,
the Romantics pitted passions against reason. Against the carefully controlled and
mathematically precise observations of the scientist, they placed the reason of the
heart and extolled its virtues.
In Enlightenment thought reason was closely linked to scientific rationality. Its
applications were expected to yield truth i.e., knowledge of universals as well as
knowledge that is universally applicable. By referring to reason of the heart, the
Romanticists questioned this basic conception of universality and truth. Against the
notion of objectivity of taste and permanence of the truly beautiful, Romanticism
affirmed the value of the contingent. They stressed inward conviction and juxtaposed
it to judgements oriented to externalized standards. Not only did they resist conformity
to impersonal laws, they maintained that the single narrow door to truth lay within
us. By looking within ourselves, into our inner consciousness we come to understand
and know the truth.
The Scottish Enlightenment thinker, David Hume, had once suggested If we take in
our hand any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask,
Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No.
Commit it then to flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Romanticism consciously sought to retrieve that which the Enlightenment had
consigned to the flames. They focussed on the magical and the mystical and exalted
the unknown over the known in a bid to reject the Enlightenment conception of truth
and science. On the one hand, they challenged the need to adhere to laid down
procedures and methods of observation and generalization, and, on the other, they
focussed on the exotic, deviant or the special case, counterposing these to the
probable or average case. Romanticism conferred a special status on the unique,
and, along with it, defined individuality in terms of departure from social norms and
conventions. Against the classical unities of time and place, they welcomed a melange
of times, tones, moods and places.
The Enlightenment had viewed the world as a harmonious, integrated whole.
Romanticism, on the other hand, perceived it as an incongruous assemblage and

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tension filled conjunction of parts that could not add up to a single, coherent, unified
whole. The totality was at best a mosaic, characterized by plurality and dissonance.
The use of standardized techniques and procedures by the Enlightenment was based
on the assumption that the universe both natural and social had a patterned
regularity. It functions in accordance with certain laws that can be discovered by the
application of human reason and scientific method. By emphasizing dissonance of
parts and uniqueness of events Romanticism rejected this assumption of Enlightenment
thinking. In its view the world defied neat categorization and was not amenable to
the kind of systematic, analytical study that was the hallmark of science. The writings
of these theorists were filled with imagery of twilight, blurring boundaries and absence
of clear-cut distinctions. Their works of art depicted pictures of the natural forces
and elements that defied human control. While the Enlightenment art told a story of
clear, calm skies in which man was in control of his destiny, Romanticism presented
a turbulent world in which chaos and uncertainty prevailed, reminding human being
of the limits of their knowledge and the finitude of their existence.

Critiques of
Enlightenment

By concentrating on the singular and the unique, on the one hand, and the mystical
and the unknown, on the other, Romanticism drew attention to the failure of human
reason. If the Enlightenment expressed optimism that the world could be known
fully by the human mind, Romanticism pointed to that which resisted explanation by
human reason and scientific knowledge. Romanticism did not simply reverse the
antinomies that defined the Enlightenment, they challenged the philosophy of Realism
that informed the latter. Scientific rationality was anchored in the belief that truth can
be arrived at through an accurate description of the external world. Romanticism
challenged this notion of realism in three ways. First, it questioned the possibility of
apprehending truth through the methods employed by science; second, it retrieved
categories that had no place in a world that is experienced as fact; and third, it
redefined the notion of truth emphasizing the capacity of the individual to create new
meanings and values.
The idea that truth entails an accurate description of an external reality that is known
through sensory perception and systematic observation was the constant object of
doubt and criticism within Romanticism. In response to Newtons Opticks Thomas
Campbell wrote:
Can all that optics teach, unfold
Thy form to please me so,
As when I dreamt of gems and gold
Hid in thy radiant bow?
When science from Creations face
Enchantments veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws! (from To the Rainbow)
In a similar vein Keats also rebelled against the reduction of the rainbow to prismatic
colours. Such representations, in his view, deprived it of its poetry and aesthetic
quality, and in the process failed to fully experience or perceive this object.
While some Romanticists questioned the loss of truth through the analytic-synthetic
method of the sciences, others, like Rousseau, gave a privileged place to emotions
and feelings. The Enlightenment had dismissed these categories as subjective, and

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unable to grasp objective truth, but Rousseau held them to be crucial to the
understanding of the self and society. Further, he emphasized the role of the individual
and maintained that the creative originality of the artist is better able to capture the
truth of the external world. The Enlightenment Philosophes attempted to discover
the world, i.e., to unveil the truth that was already there. In contrast to this, the
Romantics stressed the capacity of the individual to create new meanings and values.
The idea that truth is an object of construction and creation rather than discovery
was subsequently developed by Nietzsche to provide a critique of the Enlightenment
and even its Romantic critics.

3.3

NIETZSCHE

Romanticism had lamented the loss of meaning in the modern world. To fill this void
they turned to nature, religion and tradition. Nietzsche, writing in the late nineteenth
century, questioned just this. While accepting the spiritual wasteland in which the
modern man walks alone, he maintained that neither proximity to nature nor religion
could provide the free man with peace, joy or certainty. Speaking passionately
against a return to the past, he wrote: The barbarism of all ages possessed more
happiness than we do let us not deceive ourselves on this point! but our impulse
towards knowledge is too widely developed to allow us to value happiness without
knowledge, or the happiness of a strong and fixed delusion: it is painful to us even to
imagine such a state of things! Our restless pursuit of discoveries and divinations has
become for us as attractive and as indispensable as hapless love of a lover.
Knowledge within us has developed into a passion, which does not shrink from any
sacrifice and at bottoms fears nothing but its own extinction.It may be that mankind
will perish eventually from this passion for knowledge! - but even that does not
daunt me.
For Nietzsche there was another reason why man could no longer rely on custom
and tradition. Tradition oppresses: it appeals to a higher authority, an authority that is
obeyed not because it commands what is useful to us but merely because it
commands . The free man cannot therefore depend upon it. He is an individual,
defying custom and norms of received morality. It is his will to depend on nothing
but himself. Since the free man of the modern age cannot find solace either in religion
or tradition, there are just two options before him; a) he may abandon the search
for an ultimate meaning; and b) he may create meaning by his own will and action.
In exploring these alternatives Nietzsche did not merely reject the Enlightenment
and its Romantic alternative, he questioned the entire tradition of western rationalist
thought, beginning with Plato. For Nietzsche all schools of thought had one thing in
common: they had firm belief in themselves and their knowledge. They believed that
they had arrived at the truth. In the Athenian world of ancient Greek city-states
Plato claimed that reason could give man access to the ultimate reality the world of
forms. In recent times, the Enlightenment claimed that the application of scientific
method has yielded the truth about the world. Each in its own way thus claims that it
has discovered the truth about the external world that exists independently of us.
Further, that this truth has been arrived at impersonally and objectively; i.e., in terms
of qualities that inhere in the objects themselves.
Men have, according to Nietzsche, lived in this state of theoretical innocence for
centuries believing that they possess the right method for discovering the nature of
ultimate reality, and for determining what is good and valuable. Working under the
influence of these childish presuppositions they have failed to realize that the external
world is in itself devoid of all meanings and values. Whatever has value in the present
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world has it not in itself by its nature. Rather a value was given to it, bestowed
upon it, it was we who gave and bestowed! We only have created the world which
is of any account to man.

Critiques of
Enlightenment

In making this argument and suggesting that man is a creator, a continuous poet of
life, Nietzsche was not undermining the significance of cognition. For Nietzsche
knowledge remains a supreme value, but if pure knowledge as revealed by reason
or experiments is the only end then we would have to follow whatever direction
these faculties take us in. We have to be prepared, for instance, to follow the path
that experimental reason leads us towards, be that of nuclear energy or genetic
engineering. However, this would be complete madness. Knowledge has to be
mediated by values that we regard to be worth affirming, values by which we may
wish to construct the world.
The role of the artist is therefore of the utmost importance. For it is the work of an
artist that creates and unravels for us alternative worlds. While men of science aim
to discover what is already there, the artist gives shape to a world, expressing human
ideals. For this reason Nietzsche maintained that poetry and myths were a valuable
source of knowledge for us. In Nietzsches works the artist was not just the other
of the modern rational scientist. He was, first and foremost, a creator; and as a
creator he embodied the ability to transcend the boundaries of the social and what is
designated as the rational. The artist as such stood alone, challenging the moralism
implicit in western philosophical traditions.
Thus it was through Nietzsche and the Romanticists that some of the basic tenets of
the Enlightenment came to be questioned in a fundamental way. In particular the
view that the present was the most advanced and civilized era in the history of
humankind became subject to scrutiny. Critiques of the idea of progress, reason and
industrial rationality sought to displace the centrality accorded to science in the
Enlightenment scheme of things. The critics, by and large, accepted that the new age
of capitalism, scientific discovery and industrialization had provided a much softened
world for the mortals. It had offered a benign ethic of health, vitalism and welfare but
the problem was that these developments challenged the existing conceptions without
offering any alternative vision of the meaning of life. Consequently, the critics searched
for an alternative to the industrial society, especially to the instrumental and technical
rationality that permeated the present. Romanticism of the late 19th century only
marked the first step in this direction. Subsequent theorists carried this task forward
by pointing to a) limitations of the Enlightenment project of progress; b) the
exploitative nature of the capitalism; and c) the violence implicit in modern science.

3.4

KARL MARX

The early writings of Karl Marx showed that capitalist mode of production generates
four types of alienation: alienation of man in the workplace; alienation of man from
his product; alienation of man from his species life; and, alienation of man from man.
For human beings, work is a means of self-expression and development of ones
potential. However, in capitalism work ceases to fulfil this requirement. The industrial
unit divides the work of production into small fragments; it compartmentalizes jobs
such that each individual repeatedly performs the same differentiated and narrowly
specialized task. Under these circumstances, work becomes a routine, if not a
drudgery. At the same time, individual gets alienated from the end-product of their
creation. They can no longer relate to the product that emerges from these factories.
Even though the worker through his labour creates all the products, from the simplest
to the most complex machines, yet, they appear to him as reified commodities in the
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market. He can no longer own them as his creations. In fact he confronts these
objects as a stranger and is dominated by them. Work thus becomes a mode of
oppressing men. Instead of being a means of self-realization and fulfillment it is
transformed into a repressive activity. The instrumental rationality that governs the
workplace also extends to the social space. The urban industrial towns in which
men live also function on the principle of utility and need. Men see each other as
objects of use value and relate to each other on that basis primarily. Their alienation
is thus complete: it extends from the economic domain to the social and the political.

3.5

MARCUSE AND THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

For Marx, freedom could not effectively exist in such a society. The world that
Enlightenment had fantasized about could not possibly ensure liberation of men. Not
even the most progressive expressions of that rationality namely, science and
industrialization - could provide for a society in which men could realize their potential.
Towards the end of the 18th century, Romanticism had spoken of the moral ambiguity
of the newly emerging order. It had also hinted at the loss of freedom in the age of
industrialization. These themes were revived in the second half of the 20th century
by the New Left, most notably in the writings of Herbert Marcuse. In his book, One
Dimensional Man, Marcuse characterized the post-enlightenment industrial society
as irrational and repressive. Despite the apparent progress and increase in
productivity, this society, in his view, was destructive of the free development of
human needs and faculties. To many it may appear that political freedom is protected
in this society and there has been an expansion in the liberties enjoyed by men.
Today there is more to choose from: many different newspapers, radio stations, TV
channels and a whole gamut of commodities in the market from different varieties
of potato chips to motor cars and washing machines. Yet, men have no real capacity
to make choices of their own.
Mens needs are constantly shaped and manipulated by the media industry that
furthers the interests of a few. It moulds and constructs images that determine the
choices we make at home, in the market place and in social interactions. In a world
where false needs are fashioned by the media there is no effective intellectual
freedom or liberation of man. Men act and participate as pre-conditioned receptacles
of long standing. Indeed through their actions they reinforce the instruments of
socio-economic control and their oppression. According to Marcuse, the modern
industrialized world constituted a more progressive stage of alienation. Its seeming
progress, the means of mass transportation and communication, the commodities
of lodging, food and clothing, the irresistible output of the entertainment and
information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual
and emotional reactions which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly to the
producers, and through the latter, to the whole. The products indoctrinate and
manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood.
And as these beneficial products become available to more individuals in more social
classes, the indoctrination they carry ceases to be publicity; it becomes a way of life.
It is a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern
of one-dimensional thought and behaviour. More importantly, as men and women
share in the same images and ideas there is less and less the possibility of challenging
the present and seeking alternatives to it.

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In a world where images, presentation and appearance count more than even the
content, these theorists felt there could be no real freedom, or for that matter, the
possibility of communicative rationality asserting itself in the life-world. For
Marcuse as well as for other members of the Frankfurt School the Enlightenment

had transformed what was once liberating reason, engaged in the fight against religious
dogma and superstition, into a repressive orthodoxy. It had done this by visualizing
reason as an instrument of control; and, as a tool for gaining mastery over the world
rather than critical reflection and reconstruction. Instrumental reason that was
concerned primarily with efficiency, economy and utility could not be expected to
liberate man or to construct a better world.

3.6

Critiques of
Enlightenment

CRITICS OF SCIENCE

In the second half of the twentieth century, a similar doubt is raised about science.
Can science create a better world: a world in which individuals can enjoy freedom
and happiness? The Enlightenment had answered this question in the affirmative. Its
optimism emanated, in part, from its view that science had revealed the truth. Its
method had enabled men to know the external reality, the world around us, while
technological application had facilitated control over that reality such that it could
now serve the interest of man. Science had in this dual sense made man the master
of the universe. Men may not have designed that magnificent machine but they were
certainly in a position to control and manipulate it to suit their ends. Science symbolized
this faith and it was for this reason that the Enlightenment had given it a special status
in the order of things. This faith in science has been challenged in the late twentieth
century. Among other things the critics maintain that modern science and technology
promote violence, and cannot therefore be a means for improving the human condition
or shaping a better, more peaceful, world.
In India this point of view is best represented in the writings of Ashis Nandy, Vandana
Shiva and Claude Alvares. All of them see a link between science, technology,
oppression and violence. For these analysts science is intrinsically violent. Both
science and technology are violent ways of handling the world; hence, their use for
violent purposes is assured. In collusion with colonialism and imperialism, science
unleashed violence against traditional ways of life. Today, it has resulted in the vast
accumulation of armaments and nuclear arsenal, all of which threaten the very
existence of life on earth. In addition, it has resulted in concentration of power in the
hands of few. Science does not simply downgrade tradition, it positions scientific
knowledge against everyday experience and received knowledge. In the process it
gives a special position to the technocrat, the specialists. In the scientific worldview, it is these men of knowledge rather than ordinary citizens who are empowered.
Likewise, development and progress sanctioned by science has uprooted people
from their natural surroundings and has resulted in the displacement of countless
people from their land. Heavy industries and big dams have dislodged communities
without any real possibility of rehabilitating them, taken over their land and resulted
in the destruction of valuable agricultural land. At the same time, it has alienated
communities from the resources that are crucial to their very existence.
According to Vandana Shiva, science is not merely responsible for the creation of
sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, it is destructive even in its peaceful
applications. In activities like agriculture and health, where the professed objective
is human welfare, science remains largely violent. Scientific agriculture has resulted
in aggressive and reckless pillage of nature. While traditional modes of farming left
time for nature to regenerate itself, today the pattern of crop cultivation has generated
problems at various levels. The use of new seeds, which promise higher yield, has
destroyed bio-diversity and the richness of nature. Excessive exploitation of ground
resources through cultivation of at least three crops each year, primarily for purposes
of sale in the market, has left the farmer poorer. The condition of soil has deteriorated
and it has created an environment that is favourable for multiplication of disease.

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In the area of health similarly, there is an increase in iatrogenic illness. In fact iatrogenic
illness cause more deaths than road accidents. In university hospitals in America,
one out of five patients contract iatrogenic illness and one out of 30 die because of
it. In other words, for these theorists, science has not yielded a safer and better
world. While increasing productivity and cure for several diseases, it has created
newer forms of illnesses, upset the balance of nature and worsened the condition of
life for the ordinary man.
As we observed earlier, Romanticism had contrasted the world ushered in by
industrializing capital and science with the ideal existence of man in nature. It
had challenged the Enlightenment idea of progress by glorifying nature and
seeking a return to it. If Enlightenment had credited science with advancing
the happiness of man, Romanticism blamed it for increasing alienation, violence,
loss of peace and security. It warned humankind of the disasters that come with
science and its technological applications, and craved for the cosmic order that is
supposed to be there, present in nature. It is this reliance upon tradition and the
natural order that distinguishes Romanticism from the postmodern critiques
of Enlightenment.

3.7

POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism, taking its cue from Nietzsche, problematizes not just science but
also philosophy and religion. Each of these intellectual engagements, in its view,
seeks foundations; that is, they look for absolute and unconditional basis of reality
and claim to arrive at the truth. The only difference being that while religion locates
the absolute in the world beyond, science points to the laws of nature as constituting
the foundations of the world and philosophy places its faith in the capacity of reason
to unearth that absolute truth. What remains unaltered is that each of them looks for,
and seeks to discover the truth that is already there. Against this worldview,
postmodernism asks us to abandon the search for foundations and universal truth.
Like Nietzsche, the postmodernist thinkers assert that knowledge does not involve
discovering a meaning that is already there, pre-contained in the text. For the
postmodernists, the task of every inquiry is, and must be, to deconstruct the text: to
read it in a way that allows new meanings to emerge from it. Nietzsche had argued
that the history of the west, from the time of Plato onwards, reveals a tyranny of the
mind. Plato claimed that philosophers armed with the power of reason would
penetrate the world of appearances and arrive at the truth. He therefore banished
the poets from the Republic. In recent times, the Enlightenment bestows the same
faith in systematic observation and experience. Both are convinced that they possess
the absolute truth and the perfect method to arrive at it. Countless people have,
over the years, sacrificed themselves to these convictions. Believing that they knew
best they imposed their ways upon others.
The idea that we know the truth, that we and we alone have access to it,
has been a source of fanaticism in the world. Postmodernists add to this
Nietzschean sentiment to say that it has also been the source of totalitarianism. To
protect freedom that the modern man so deeply cherishes we must therefore
abandon this search for absolute truth. And realize instead that others also believe
that they know the truth and are acting in accordance with it. Intellectual arrogance
must therefore give way to a sense of deeper humility: that is, to a framework
wherein meta-narratives give way to particular histories of people living in a
specific time and place, and space is created for the co-presence of multiple projects
and knowledge systems.
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3.8

SUMMARY

Critiques of
Enlightenment

To conclude, critiques of Enlightenment today have taken a new turn. Romanticism

had only questioned the Enlightenment system of valuation, its assessment of the
present modern era. Where Enlightenment had seen with progress and the march of
reason, Romanticism only found moral degeneration and loss of freedom for the
self. It challenged the Enlightenment by reversing its priorities and judgements.
Postmodernism, by comparison, treads the path shown by Nietzsche and rejects
the very search for some good values and morals. It therefore questions not merely
the Enlightenment idea of knowledge and the process by which we can arrive at the
truth. Rather it rejects the very idea of absolute truth and, with it, of a single method
of inquiry that can yield knowledge. Postmodernism thus charters the path of antifoundationalism where all signs of permanence, certainty and universality are wiped
clean. It is not possible here to discuss the idea of the self and the world that antifoundationalism itself ushers in, but we may with Nietzsche say that it is one in which
taste and proportionateness are strange to us.

SOME EXERCISES FOR THIS BLOCK

Unit 1 : Renaissance and the Idea of the Individual
1.

How did developments in trade and commerce create conditions for the
Renaissance?

2.

What was the process through which religion began to lose its dominate
position in European Society?

Unit 2 : The Enlightenment

1.

What was the essence of the idea of progress as espoused by the

Enlightenment thinkers?

2.

How did Enlightenment thinkers understand the relationship between

science and religion?

Unit 3 : Critiques of Enlightenment

1.

What are the main ways in which the Romantics differed from the
Enlightenment thinkers?

2.

How did Karl Marx and the Frankfurt School advance the ideas initiated
by the Enlightenment thinkers?

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SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THIS BLOCK

(Block-2 of the Foundation Course in Humanities and Social Sciences, FHS-1, for
B.A. students of IGNOU. (Specially recommended for those students who may not
have studied Modern World earlier. They may read it before going through this Block).
Hale, J.R., Renaissance Europe, 1480 1520.
Hyland, Paul and others (ed.), The Enlightenment: A Source book and Reader,
London, 2003.
Jacob, Margaret C., The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents,
New York, 2001.
Johnson, Paul, The Renaissance, London, 2000.
Keke wich, Lucille (editor), The Renaissance in Europe: A Cultural Enquiry
(The Impact of Humanism), UK Open University, Oxford, 2000.
Kramer, Loyd and Maza, Sarah (editor), A Companion to Western Historical
Thought, Oxford, 2002.
Munck, Thomas, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, London, 2000.

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